


depths

by mxmyth



Series: Shattered Campaign [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I bumped up the rating to be safe, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Non-binary character, Non-binary narrator, Shattered Campaign, Survivor Guilt, Trauma, this one is big sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:01:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28879911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxmyth/pseuds/mxmyth
Summary: Shaanso had depths of love within them, and they could live with that.
Series: Shattered Campaign [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117964
Kudos: 2





	depths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IonianAstronaut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IonianAstronaut/gifts).



> Shaanso is my elf-orc monk for the Shattered game, and I'll be playing them while I take a break from being Tinwé, who is both the face of the party and a lot to have living in your head. This story takes place five years before the events of the campaign.

Shaanso hadn't meant to fall asleep. Before they had closed their eyes dawn had been breaking over the horizon, pink and resplendent. Now the sky was blue and the hot sun was beaming down at a noontime angle, and the ocean all around was calm and glittering too bright.

They shifted, feeling the protest of their joints, stretching their muscles out from the hunched position that they had fallen asleep in. They rubbed their stinging eyes and licked their chapped lips with their dry tongue. Dehydration and hunger were making their thoughts as slow as cold molasses and the discomfort of their situation did nothing to rouse them. If anything it made them want to curl up at the bottom of the dinghy and leave it all behind, to just go to sleep and not worry about waking up again.

An awful, selfish thought. They counted to three and then made themself turn and lift the edge of the tarp to check on their captain.

He lay still and pale, his head cushioned on Shaanso's sash. One of his thick, calloused hands rested over the bandage that Shaanso had made of their shirt. They had tried to try to wrap the worst of his chest wounds, but they could see that he was still leaking a slow trickle of blood through the fabric. He was breathing, but it was a slow and laboured thing. He was going to die.

Their captain was going to die. Their brother was dead. Unless one of their gods saw their speck of a lifeboat on The Endless Ocean, which seemed even more unlikely than being spotted by a passing ship, Shaanso was going to die too.

Shaanso pushed those thoughts out of their head as they took another inventory of what they had to survive on. All that they had was what had been on their person when the two of them were forced into the life boat and unceremoniously dropped off the side of _Bright Horizon._

Captain Keen's shortsword, sheathless and with a crust of dried blood along its edge; the captain's spyglass and compass; Shaanso's waterskin and fiddle in its case; and two lengths of rope and the canvas tarp, which had been in the dinghy when they were set adrift. No rations, no fishing gear, no way to get more water. They had nothing, or close enough to nothing that the difference didn't matter.

Of what they did have, the waterskin was the most important. They were set upon in the late morning so it had been mostly full when the attack had begun. Now after over a day adrift it was half full. Shaanso had given the captain as much as they dared, to try to help him replenish the blood he'd lost, and taken only a couple of sips for themself. Soon it would be all gone.

The waterskin was the most important, but it was for the presence of the fiddle that Shaanso could have wept in relief. It had belonged to their father.

They allowed themself a moment to hesitate, to run their bruised hand across the leather surface of the case and picture the instrument inside, its luster and the grace of its neck. _Father,_ they prayed, _if I did the wrong thing, then I don't want to know it._

They received no answer, as was usual, so they picked up the waterskin and joined their captain beneath the makeshift canvas cover. At the quiet shuffle of their approach he stirred and opened his eyes. The deep blue of his irises were black in the shade. From his prone position he watched Shaanso uncork the skin, and when they raised the bag to his lips he turned his head away.

"No," he rasped, low and soft. "No, you'll be needing that."

"You need to drink," Shaanso insisted, "to get your strength back." 

Keen raised the hand that he'd been resting protectively over his wound, showing the fresh red on his palm. "I'm not going to survive this. But you might, yet. The water is yours."

“Don’t say that,” Shaanso tried to protest, but it came out in a hoarse whisper. Keen dropped his hand back onto his chest and shut his eyes again. Shaanso re-corked the skin and held it in their hands, quiet for a long time, listening to their captain’s breathing and the soft slap of little waves against the side of the hull. 

Shaanso cleared their throat, which had all their feelings stuck inside of it. Keen twitched at the sound and opened his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Shaanso began, voice thick with emotion, but Keen cut them off.

“I’ll have none of that,” he sighed, a trembling exhale. “You stood your ground, brave as ever. You were loyal to me until the end, and if anything comes after this life, I’ll remember it.”

“It’s not the end yet,” Shaanso said, and Keen turned his head to look into their face.

“It is for me,” he rasped. “Shaanso. Listen to me. I was like you—favoured by The Lady of Fortune. She brought me through hell and high water. Sometimes by the skin of my teeth, but I got through. She’s with you, too, but she doesn’t stay forever. My luck has run out, but you have to try. Have to want to live.”

Shaanso shuffled closer to take his hand, which was cold in theirs. Their eyes were trying to tear in spite of their dehydration, but they held it back.

“Maybe she’s still with us both,” Shaanso said, and Keen smiled despite the pain. All his talking had brought out a cold sweat on his face. His lips looked bloodless and his eyes could no longer focus on them.

“No,” their captain sighed. “No, this is the end for me. But you… You can live. Promise me, Shaanso.”

“Aye, Captain,” Shaanso managed. A single salty tear rolled down their cheek, precious water lost. “I’ll try. I’ll live.”

There was another long silence. Keen’s breathing became more even and though no colour returned to his face, he lived still. Shaanso thought that he had fallen unconscious when he gave their hand a weak squeeze.

“Don’t forget,” he whispered, and these would be his last words. “She doesn’t stay. Live, while you can.”

He held on until sunset. Shaanso stayed at his side, holding his hand in theirs and praying to every god they knew. If any of those gods could hear them, none of them saw fit to intercede.

Shaanso sensed the end coming, so they were watching as their captain took his last breath and didn’t see the seabird that passed overhead. As the belly of the sun touched the curve of the horizon and an albatross winged its way between water and sky, Captain Tomlin Keen passed from the world and into whatever awaited him next.

For their part, Shaanso waited until it was full dark to fulfill their last duty. The waning half-eye of Noca watched as they put Captain Keen’s spyglass back in the pocket of his vest, kissed his cold forehead, and struggled to push his stiffening body off the side of the boat. It was a graceless effort, for Keen was not a small man and Shaanso’s arms trembled with grief and fatigue. The process nearly tipped the dinghy, and when it was done Shaanso felt more exhausted than they ever had. They tossed the dirty sword in after the captain, but kept his compass.

It was not the send-off that a great man deserved, but it was the one he got. Without him the lifeboat felt smaller and the ocean so much larger, the depths deeper. The desire rose again in Shaanso, to simply go to sleep and not worry about waking up. Instead, they uncorked the waterskin and drank half of what was left, a sip at a time.

* * *

It would be two more sunbaked days before fortune would show her face again. By that time Shaanso was delirious with dehydration and fever, for despite their efforts at cleansing it with seawater, the rapier wound on their thigh had infected. When the improbable ship came within view they were unaware of it, too weak to sit up, let alone stand and wave their arms and shout. But luck had her way and ensured that they were spotted anyway, despite the twilight that had fallen, despite everything.

When they felt the jolt of another small boat bump into theirs, Shaanso was in a half-dream. They dreamed that they were home and thought they must have nodded off in grandmother's apple tree and fallen to the grass again. When they heard voices and felt unfamiliar hands lifting them into the air, they came back just enough to rasp out a plea for the strangers to save their fiddle before sinking back into the dreaming.

Their next memories had that haze of pain and fever to them. Later, they were told which of the crew it was that had trickled water over their burned face and spooned sweet mouthfuls between their cracked lips, and how the ship’s healer had been able to cleanse their blood and heal their wound, but the ordeal had left them weak and in need of rest.

When Shaanso woke with a clear mind and an incredible thirst, they had been within the belly of their rescuer ship for two days. The captain was a sturdy, stoic elven woman called Cormorant and she visited within a half hour of their waking. Captain Cormorant told Shaanso that they were aboard the _The Grey-Head_ , that a sharp-eyed rigger had spotted them in the gloom, and that they were very lucky indeed to have survived. She asked Shaanso from where they had come and what had happened to them.

It was to Captain Cormorant and her quiet strength that Shaanso first told their story. It felt wrong with every telling through the years, as few as those tellings were, because it wasn’t their story alone. It was the story of _Bright Horizon_ and it belonged equally to all of her people, the capable crew family and the researchers with their instruments and stuffy books.

It was the story of Atalu, who had been Shaanso's soul brother and who had died, brilliant and defiant. It was the story of Captain Keen, who had been wise and kind, who had died in defense of his home and family, and whom Shaanso had given to the waves. 

And as hateful as it was, _The Sea Dragon_ and the pirate Zoran Halfmoon were a part of the story, too. What a horrible thing it was that decades of storms survived, sunsets sailed, and shanties sung out over the water could be brought to a violent, pointless end by the will of one man.

Captain Cormorant was deeply moved by their telling. She had rested her calloused hand on the back of Shaanso’s bowed head and offered her condolences, and it was then that the dam of disbelief within them broke. Shaanso wept with sobs that shook their whole body. In that moment the grief felt bottomless. They feared that the pain might kill them in a way that they hadn’t feared anything before.

It was wrong that Shaanso should be the only one that fortune saw fit to carry through the end of this tragedy, and unfair that they should find themself alone the bearer of this story.

It was wrong that they should survive when no one else had, and that those who learned their history called it good luck that they should live.

It was wrong that they should be afraid of their own heart, to want to die for the breaking of it.

It was all wrong, Cormorant agreed, but few things in the world are truly right. The touch of selfishness and evil could be seen everywhere. All that decent folk could do was make what goodness they could, and protect it with what they had.

* * *

Shaanso eventually stopped crying, but that lake of pain within them never drained away. Later, they would come to understand that it was just that way. Such grief was ever present and never got any smaller, it was simply that your capacity for living would expand outward. With time and distance the silty shore of fresh loss would become firmer ground, and one day there would be space again to live.

You would walk the new growth forests of your life in the after clumsily, always within sight of that lake at first. Some days you might misstep and find yourself back in the mud, or fall right in and be up to your neck in the pain. You might lose a whole year trying to drown your sorrows in a bottle, barely treading water. But you would touch the bottom, or someone would throw you a line, and you would try again. You would venture a little further away every day, and eventually go days with your back to it, but it was always there.

With enough time you might even find a hill that overlooks your lake, a vantage point from which you can see how its surface mirrors the sky and appreciate it for what it holds. It was like their grandmother had once said: grief is love that has nowhere to go. Shaanso had depths of love within them, and they could live with that.

It was from that perspective that Shaanso finally fiddled again, stumbling over notes that would become familiar once more with practice. They played for their father, and Atalu, and their captain. They played for grief and those hardest lessons learned—but they played also for a promise.

With their eyes on the horizon, Shaanso played for the bittersweet triumph of being alive.

**Author's Note:**

> The world of Luris has two moons, one greater and one lesser, and together they are referred to as "the eyes of Noca."
> 
> My gratitude to our wonderful DM, [IonianAstronaut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IonianAstronaut/pseuds/IonianAstronaut), for an inspiring world and a great game.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
